30 Dec The Driving Goal of Mobilization
Over the last couple of decades, the world has witnessed the emergence of a different kind of leader in world missions. I think the term that best fits this leader is the term, mission mobilizer. What is curious, is that from a biblical and historical perspective, there is nothing new about the role itself. The role of the mission mobilizer has ancient origins. We see it in the call of Abraham, who after encountering God, rallied his family, relocating them to a foreign land to establish the worship of Yahweh – the Only True God. But what is different today is that we are seeing a global uprising, as it were, of men and women from everywhere, who are identifying themselves as mission mobilizers. It’s truly a remarkable shift in the way the currents of missionary movement have historically flowed.
In the era of the modern missions movement, a period we generally mark from the time of the first western missionary, William Carey in 1792 to the present, most of the mobilization among churches occurred in the western regions of Europe, the United States and Canada. This paradigm has been totally eclipsed by a new phenomena rising out of the global church that is so significant that many are questioning whether a new era of missionary sending has begun. I believe this may very well be the case.
Everywhere we travel in the world to teach on missions and the goal of the church to reach the nations, we encounter men and women who understand keenly the task of the mission mobilizer. I personally was awed by this 7 years ago when I first started training leaders in mobilization from Russia and Ukraine. I did not expect so many to be so clear-eyed and focused about this role in particular. I had thought it was a role only westerners talk about. There is immense excitement in churches around the world for this new season of mobilizing their own people and resources to reach the most difficult places in the world. But what is behind it all? What is at the heart of this role? I think the answer is found in understanding the driving goal of mobilization.
Put simply, I believe, the driving goal of mobilization is to point the hearts of God’s people to the heart of God.
To say that mobilization is a strategy isn’t a wrong statement, but I think it falls short of describing the core motivation, and I suspect that if it were only about strategy, then we wouldn’t see the kind of global interest in mobilization as a ministry role that we see today. It’s much more than strategy. Mobilization, at its core, is the ministry of connecting the hearts of God’s people with the missionary heart of God.
The oft quoted maxim, mission exists because worship doesn’t, coined by John Piper, is a beautiful and succinct statement that reveals to us that we do mission primarily to bring worshipping people to Jesus. We are increasing the worship of God as we bring people to him and we are expanding his Kingdom as people enter it from every tongue and tribe. But a survey of the state of the global church shows that we are not all doing mission. It seems that along the way, many have lost their vision, become tired with the mundane demands this life places on us. It’s difficult for the church to share Christ when the church struggles to commune with the risen Christ itself. I don’t think anybody today would argue the fact that the church needs a renewal of heart. We need a fresh encounter with the God of the Universe. If mission exists because worship doesn’t, then mobilization exists because mission doesn’t.
The mobilizer is a leader who sees the great potential of the church and is unwilling to allow that potential to go untapped. While the mobilzer may use tools or strategy, he or she is motivated by something deeper and more sustained. The mobilizer understands that it’s not merely a strategy to be implemented, but a connection to be experienced. That connection is with the heart of God. There is no better and more durable remedy to our lost vision, than the full bodied immersion into the ocean of God’s love, beauty and redemptive plan for the Universe.
This renewal begins where it ought always begin, in the Word, from which everything came in the beginning and to where everything will go in the end. Genesis makes it clear that we live in a Word-built Universe. It makes sense, therefore, that since God created the universe by the Word, that redemption and spiritual renewal would come about by that same Word. Leaders who wield the Word of God to revive the church, recalibrating it to its ancient mission, I call mobilizers.
The driving motivation isn’t marked by the number of pins on a map, but a Kingdom becoming ever populated by people who are loving, worshipping and enjoying the God of the Universe.
The mobilizer understands that this work doesn’t wait until heaven. It starts today.